Monday, October 17, 2011

Working with Vim

Many newcomers to the world of Linux and the Linux programming environment are scared of Vim! Similar was my situation a few months ago when I was reliant on Eclipse CDT for my programming needs. I had acknowledged the flexibility of Vim at the first stance and was willing to try it since quite long; after all, there had to be a reason to why some of the most prolific programmers I have met were not willing to move ahead of it.

Working with massive projects, I discovered the answer-
When abstraction eases out things for you, you tend to enjoy its benefits and avoid looking into unnecessary details with all your focus on implementation. When you are in the urgency to begin outputting, you tend to work this way leaving out the details for future research. That's a newbie approach.

But when you are used to stuff on a daily basis you look for ways to shorten repetitions so much that you wish certain aspects of life are fast-forwarded in macro style. Even an unnecessary mouse click becomes heavy! When you do not want to bother your brain with minute things and reserve it for that juicy algorithm/system design you had planned all the way, its your Peripheral Nervous System that readily volunteers for handling teeny-weeny issues. That's what Vi(m) exploits. Its commands are a bit hard getting used to in the beginning but once internalized, you can even use them while dreaming!

Disclaimer: The opinions shared on this blog are mine alone and do not implicitly represent the views of my employer, the GNOME Foundation, Planet FLOSS India, tuxmachines.org or anyone else who has syndicated its content.

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About Her

A proud patriot of India, born in Kanpur and brought up in Lucknow. An Asian bringing GNOME to Asia as a GNOME Asia organizing committee member and a world citizen making it a happier place to live by working on open source software. 2010 onward, a contributor to open source projects. 2012-2014, a member of the GNOME Foundation.

She has always had a strong desire for coding and going with her instincts, currently hacks on Linux Kernel and related tools under the flagship of IBM's Linux Technology Center. She left no chance in life of learning what interests her in terms of computing, be it languages, tools or algorithms. She loves puzzles and creates low-complexity, elegant solutions to any problem. Recent experiments have demonstrated her to be possessing sound public-addressing skills too.

To take a break, she prefers changing her surroundings which provides her an insight about the history, culture and discoveries pertinent to the place and its inhabitants. She has toured a lot of India, covering almost the whole of it, and some places beyond her motherland. Each new place opened to her a whole new world of knowledge and memories inexplicable.